The present disclosure contemplates that the estimated size of criminal activity that involves some form of cash proceeds is nearly $100 billion in the United States. Conventionally, most of this money has been moved by courier and was laundered through sophisticated networks.
The advent of prepaid payment cards is making cash less relevant and improving the criminals' ability to move funds in innocuous manners. Law enforcement organizations at every level are seeing increasing movement to prepaid payment card use in crime. Law enforcement organizations, however, currently have no means to seize funds “loaded on” or associated with prepaid payment cards. Therefore, the funds from criminal activities are often still maintained by many of these criminal organizations. Additionally, the identifying data obtained through this process may be highly valued by law enforcement organizations.
The present disclosure contemplates that prepaid payment cards (associated with prepaid accounts) can be issued from any country that a bank is a member of a payment network (e.g., the Mastercard® network or the Visa® network). Prepaid virtual accounts are growing in global use and accessible with a mobile device, making the plastic card required only for automated teller machine transactions.
The present disclosure further contemplates that there is no central database to record prepaid payment card activity. Therefore, prepaid payment cards are increasingly used for criminal purposes, including payment for criminal activity and to commit criminal acts. Some examples include drug-related activities, prostitution activities, and money laundering activities. Governmental agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, may desire to curb the use of prepaid payment cards in association with such criminal activity, and seize the funds and identifying data associated with the prepaid payment cards (and their corresponding prepaid accounts).
Capturing funds and identifying data associated with prepaid payment cards and looking for patterns may assist law enforcement entities in identifying banks that support illegal activity.